Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
…and this is a pharyngula stage embryo.
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The Washington newsletter Roll Call reports that a 1981 tape of candidate Pat Robertson, who used to be an evangelical faith healer, has been distributed to several political reporters. The tape shows Robertson at a 1981 faith healing session in Philadelphia, claiming to cure members of the audience of cancer, hemorrhoids and bad teeth. Later, he shouts that God has just fixed a hernia.
[Leah Garchik, San Francisco Chronicle, 14 October 1987]
Pycnogonid tagmosis and echoes of the Cambrian
Symmetry breaking and genetic assimilation
Pufferfish and ancestral genomes
The evolution of deuterostome gastrulation
I think I despise anti-environmentalists as much as I do anti-evolutionists
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Category: Creationism
Posted on: December 20, 2006 8:25 PM, by PZ Myers
Could anyone have possibly predicted this? Larry Moran has been banned from Uncommon Descent by DaveScot. Stunning surprise, eh?
We should have set up a betting pool.
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Comments
Would there been enough time between his first post and his being banned to have typed: Let's start a po ...
Posted by: John Pieret | December 20, 2006 9:07 PM
Just in time for Christmas: not one, not two, but EIGHT virgin births!
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/12/20/uk.komodo.reut/index.html
Posted by: plunge | December 20, 2006 9:40 PM
Eight? That's messed up, man! How are we supposed to know which lizard is our messiah?
Posted by: Zeno | December 20, 2006 9:48 PM
Another random bit o offtopic pharyngular fun I hadn't seen mentioned yet:
The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus (Endangered)
http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/
A hoax of Cephalopodian proportions: set up by researchers to test the ability of students to detect phony internet information. Despite, sadly (or luckily, if you were worried about the poor octopus!) being completely illusionary, not a single student in the experiment figured out that there is no such animal or ecological crisis when asked to do some work relating to researching it and its credibility, despite the hoax sites being riddled with red flags.
http://www.advance.uconn.edu/2006/061113/06111308.htm
Posted by: plunge | December 20, 2006 9:49 PM
"http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/12/20/uk.komodo.reut/index.html"
It's not Crocodilus Pontifex, but it will have to do.
Posted by: Numad | December 20, 2006 9:54 PM
"Eight? That's messed up, man! How are we supposed to know which lizard is our messiah?"
What, you've never heard the word of Raptor Jesus?
Posted by: plunge | December 20, 2006 9:58 PM
Eight? That's messed up, man! How are we supposed to know which lizard is our messiah?
Have them post over to the Uncommon Descent, and the who is banned, that one, my friend, he will be the messiah.
Posted by: decreasethesurpluspopulation386sx | December 20, 2006 10:27 PM
"Eight? That's messed up, man! How are we supposed to know which lizard is our messiah?"
Duh, the one who walks on water of course.
Posted by: Magnus | December 20, 2006 11:06 PM
[quote]A hoax of Cephalopodian proportions: set up by researchers to test the ability of students to detect phony internet information. Despite, sadly (or luckily, if you were worried about the poor octopus!) being completely illusionary, not a single student in the experiment figured out that there is no such animal or ecological crisis when asked to do some work relating to researching it and its credibility, despite the hoax sites being riddled with red flags.[/quote]
Not sure what is more disturbing. That post grads create a hoax, pass it off to seventh grade kids as truth, then claim scientific research has occurred? Or that this is part of a 1.8 million dollar grant?
Posted by: Terrance | December 20, 2006 11:18 PM
Eight? That's messed up, man! How are we supposed to know which lizard is our messiah?
You poor lost soul, haven't you heard of the Holy Octagon, Zeno? After all, Denyse O'Leary says that when doctrines about trinities or octagons, etc. start to make sense, run for the door. To the outside. So you're not supposed to understand!
Posted by: Kristine | December 20, 2006 11:19 PM
P.S. - LOL! However, I totally want a pink tentacle ribbon for my SUV.
Posted by: Terrance | December 20, 2006 11:21 PM
A quote from the NW Tree Octopus article...
Some of the students still insisted vehemently that the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus really exists.
I have this tingling feeling that I should be making some sort of comment concerning Jesus but...oh darn. The feeling left. Can't imagine what relevance I thought was there.
Posted by: Sean | December 20, 2006 11:23 PM
Not sure what is more disturbing. That post grads create a hoax, pass it off to seventh grade kids as truth, then claim scientific research has occurred? Or that this is part of a 1.8 million dollar grant?
They could have simply studied the actions of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. They managed to get a load of funding based on evidence that is even crappier than that for the tree octopus. Thanks to their little stunt, educated ADULTS continue to delude themselves. Round and round we go ...
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/16285099.htm
Davis, the city planner for McCrory, and Jay Robison, who works for the Arkansas Department of Economic Development, were driving near Cotton Plant last Friday when they saw a female ivory-billed swoop behind an oncoming truck..
Davis, who has attended workshops about identifying an ivory-billed woodpecker, said he and Robison believed it was a female because the bird had a black head and body with white wing-tipped feathers, but no red. The male ivory-billed has a red crest..
Two researchers - one from Cornell and the other from the Arkansas Audubon Society - met Davis at the site Tuesday to gather more information about the sighting, Davis said Wednesday..
"I took them down to where we saw the bird, and they were really excited about it. They wrote down everything," Davis said. "I know it's their dream to find the bird ... and I hope this helps.
Posted by: Great White Wonder | December 20, 2006 11:50 PM
Actually, I kinda like that they use the words "Darwinist" etc.
When you see a long, turgid, abstract-laden, badly written essay with no paragraph breaks that looks like a it might take a lot of effort to figure out the writer's point, the presence of a word like "Darwinism" tells you that you needn't bother.
(I don't mean to be unfair; these people may write things well worth reading. Just not about science.)
Posted by: Molly, NYC | December 21, 2006 12:18 AM
What, you've never heard the word of Raptor Jesus?
Raptor Jesus looked like a chicken. Or some kind of big bird, anyway.
Posted by: Michael Crichton | December 21, 2006 12:35 AM
What, you've never heard the word of Raptor Jesus?
Behold! He that hath been saged hath been returned to the land of mortals.
Posted by: RCP | December 21, 2006 2:52 AM
Rather than a pool, how about a competition: what is the politest, most reasonable, comment that manages to get someone banned from UD?
Posted by: Stephen | December 21, 2006 3:04 AM
That post grads create a hoax, pass it off to seventh grade kids as truth, then claim scientific research has occurred? Or that this is part of a 1.8 million dollar grant?
The perpetrators of the hoax also seem frankly anti-environmentalist. "Greenpeas is working to save the world from humans"?
Posted by: truth machine | December 21, 2006 4:11 AM
However, that page does provide an excellent image of an octopus-decorated hat!
http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/cascadiaeveningpost.jpg
Posted by: truth machine | December 21, 2006 4:13 AM
What, you've never heard the word of Raptor Jesus?
Behold! He that hath been saged hath been returned to the land of mortals.
Returned with a vengeance, eh! I picked this up from CBC news -
http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2006/12/20/jesus-poland.html
It's goddamn depressing. King fucking Jesus of Poland!
Posted by: Richard Harris | December 21, 2006 6:02 AM
It's goddamn depressing. King fucking Jesus of Poland...
Holy Jeebus, makes you wish the communists were back. At least they were (mostly) rational.
Posted by: Umilik | December 21, 2006 9:18 AM
Stephen:
"Rather than a pool, how about a competition: what is the politest, most reasonable, comment that manages to get someone banned from UD?"
That's going to be a bit difficult to do, as most comments that fit that description, that descent from the dogma of UD, never see the light of day so to speak.
While I can not prove this, I've tried posting there, and my posts never make it onto the blog. Often times very similar posts do though.
Posted by: Brian | December 21, 2006 9:31 AM
Three Raptor Jesuses are positioned in an equilateral triangle around you. Two of them move at 12 m/s, the third has a club foot and moves only at 8 m/s. In which direction should you run to maximize your survival, and how many seconds will you last before being caught?
(stolen shamelessly from xkcd.com)
Posted by: stogoe | December 21, 2006 1:13 PM
I posted two long comments here:
http://www.uncommondescent.com/archives/1884
and
http://www.uncommondescent.com/archives/1887
and each got responses, to which I posted follow ups.
All of my comments have since been deleted, which strikes me as amazingly rude, considering I was actually having a conversation.
The only evidence that I existed is: "Has anyone deleted an intepid's post ?..."
Posted by: intepid | December 21, 2006 4:37 PM
... what really irks me is that I now have no record of what I spent at least an hour of my life writing, so I am also a little peeved. I should have copied it for posterity :(
Posted by: intepid | December 21, 2006 4:42 PM
Intepid, you should head over to the Pandas thumb forum, "after the bar closes". They often keep and highlight stuff of note there, including when people get banned. They may have noticed you.
Posted by: guthrie | December 22, 2006 6:45 AM